Rogers Media uses cookies for personalization, to customize its online advertisements, and for other purposes. Learn more or change your cookie preferences. Rogers Media supports the Digital Advertising Alliance principles. By continuing to use our service, you agree to our use of cookies.

We use cookies (why?) You can change cookie preferences. Continued site use signifies consent.

It’s a slaughterhouse, it extends into other countries, and on both sides the combatants, tired of fighting this combination of a civil war (or string of civil wars) and a terrorist insurgency, have started to team up. State authorities in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad are combining their efforts, with French assistance and U.S. logistical help. On the other side, several militant groups—Ansar Dine, Al-Mourabitoun and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb—have merged into a new group, Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen.

It’s all hands on deck, or would be if Canadians were anywhere to be seen.

A decision on a peacekeeping mission is “now delayed for months,” the Toronto Star reported this morning. The United Nations held the command of a UN force in Mali open for months, in the hopes that a Canadian would be assigned to lead the mission. Eventually they gave up.

The Trudeau government is studying things. “We’re going to make sure that we take the time necessary to establish the right path forward,” the Prime Minister said in early March.

“We need to make sure… we make the right decision,” the Prime Minister said in late March.

“We have to make sure that it’s the right approach,” the Prime Minister said today.

When will they decide? “I haven’t set a date,” the defence minister said last August. “I can’t put a date to the decision,” he said in January.

Another element of the prime minister’s stock responses on this topic, on the occasions when reporters run out of other topics and ask him about peace operations, is to assert that all of this is making Canadians proud. “The commitment we have made as a country to reengaging with United Nations peacekeeping is one that I think all Canadians are proud of,” he said in March. It’s “not just altruism,” he said today. “Canada does better” in a world with more “stability.”

Meanwhile the Sahel is not getting more stable. Many dozens of people have died horribly while the government of Canada thinks about eventually getting around to maybe thinking about possibly deciding whether to commit to something eventually maybe resembling something like a military deployment. The exasperation in the voice of diplomats when they talk about this awesome extended display of dithering is formidable. Because it’s not as though nobody is taking the risk, while Justin Trudeau tells himself Canadians are proud. Other countries are taking the risk and bearing the cost.

It would be a dangerous mission. It will be approximately as dangerous next January, if Canadians undertake it, as it would have been last January, if Canadians had undertaken it. Waiting won’t make it less dangerous. If it’s too dangerous, the prime minister should say so. If it isn’t he should act.

Filed under:

Advertisement

Advertisement

Post navigation

The carnage in Mali while Trudeau delays

This will not be a peacekeeping mission. It is a hot zone with too many moving pieces. if dickhead is going to insert Cdn military in this region they better be equipped to protect and defend themselves. At the end of the day if we send troops into Mali it will absolutely not end well.

Why does the media and the government insist on calling it peacekeeping? It would be a voluntary war, to support UN imperialists trying to stabilize a mess created by the United States…blowback from Hillary’s and Obama’s Libyan fiasco?

I don’t understand why this is dithering. Before giving the go ahead for Canadians to be killed, our PM should take his time. Bush went into Iraq and the result was 600,000 INNOCENT Iraqis dead, 5000 Americans dead (plus thousands more disabled), over $3 Trillion spent not taking into account looking after all the veterans that have returned. End result: We have more people who hate the West and have created an environmental mess! A little dithering might have been a good thing.

Mali was a problem last year and the one before that. It has been ‘a problem’ for ‘western interests’, along with a big chunk of North Africa, since Canada signed-on to ‘help’ Libya by doing a regime change on Ghaddafi.

Never mind the fact that nobody, including the most hopeful President America ever had, had thought their way past the 30 days we told the world that helping would take. 90 days of humanitarian bombardment –
and a ‘4 million dollar welcome home gala and photo-op’ on Parliament Hill for our Libyan heroes – later, Libya had been changed. Its neighbours – Mali among them – followed – as soon as the Libyan guns got to them.

What can Canada do? Blow a few millions on more ‘necessary military equipment’ we can leave behind. Kill some as-yet-to-be-identified “scumbags” and add another page to a glorious military tradition? I’d prefer they don’t use my money for that.

Well, umm, ya see we can’t deploy our peacekeepers to Mali, because umm, they are doing far more important stuff like filling, umm, sandbags in Quebec…maybe we can cut em loose to go after flood season is over….

Almost Done!

Please confirm the information below before signing up.

{* #socialRegistrationForm *}
{* socialRegistration_firstName *}
{* socialRegistration_lastName *}
{* socialRegistration_emailAddress *}
{* socialRegistration_displayName *}
By clicking "Create Account", I confirm that I have read and understood each of the website terms of service and privacy policy and that I agree to be bound by them.